Mark Wadsworth has not been found to be anti-semitic, but to have brought the Labour Party into disrepute. He was in fact guilty of that. At a sensitive press launch, showcasing a very important report the Party was introducing, Wadsworth thought it appropriate to take the microphone in front of a massive media presence and launch a verbal attack on a Labour MP. Nothing Wadsworth said was anti-semitic, and I quite accept his assurance he had no idea that Smeeth was Jewish. Here was my analysis of the incident written on the day, which I believe has held up well. But Wadsworth’s notion that he was at an appropriate place and time to attack a Labour MP was, at the very least, extremely misguided.
In short, Wadsworth should have saved his justified complaint about the right wing infiltrator Ruth Smeeth’s co-ordination with the Daily Telegraph and pursued it by a more suitable avenue.
Equally, expulsion from the Party is an over the top reaction to Wadsworth’s rashness, and plainly is being done to placate the witch-hunt of “anti-Semites” which is the Blairites’ lead effort to undermine Corbyn.
The impression Wadsworth is “expelled for anti-Semitism” will now be allowed to stand, in the hope it will placate the Israeli lobby who marched 50 parliamentarians strong in a lynch mob to intimidate Wadsworth’s hearing. Corbyn seems to me to have gone down entirely the wrong path. You cannot sate the bloodlust of a witch-hunt by burning a few people you know are not really witches, in the hope the witchfinders will then get bored and go away. Caroline Lucas on Question Time last night, in her assertion that we must not be cowed into failure to criticise Israel and that anti-zionism does not equal anti-semitism, showed more political courage than the entire Labour Party leadership.
Watching that hatchet-faced Friends of Israel mob bear down on the Wadsworth hearing reminded me of the secretly taped meeting between Shai Masot of the Israeli Embassy and Joan Ryan MP of Labour Friends of Israel, where he told her he had over £1 million to give her to influence the Labour Party in Israel’s favour.
So Mark Wadsworth did bring the Labour Party into disrepute, but not nearly as much as Joan Ryan MP, and in about the same measure as every member of the lynch mob whose equally unnecessary intrusion on a party disciplinary hearing gave the media plenty of occasion for knocking copy. But do not expect natural justice to prevail in the UK’s distorted, propaganda-led politics of 2018.
Wadsworth is a martyr and an illustration that there is no freedom of speech in the Labour Party. If something like this can happen under Corbyn’s leadership, what is the point of him?
Sycophantic – Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn said: “Very sorry to hear of the death of Michael Martin. “We first met as organisers in the National Union of Public Employees, campaigning for decent public sector pay and the national minimum wage. “Michael loved his community and family, our thoughts are with them at this sad time.”
I never saw Martin as on anyone’s side except his own. A place person. A stooge. A Glasgow MP for 30 years. Part of the Scottish Labour mafia.
Broon has also sent condolences. Syrup from BLiar. ‘Tony Blair said he personally valued Lord Martin for his common sense and “sound political instinct”. He added: “Michael Martin was a breed of MP relatively rare nowadays, someone from a very poor background who worked their way up through trade union and Labour Party activity, and never lost touch with their roots and their keen sensitivity to the views and priorities of their constituents.”
No irony there then Tony! You never lost touch did you!
https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/uk/tributes-paid-to-former-house-of-commons-speaker-lord-martin-36855992.html
Sajid Javid, member of Conservative Friends of Israel, and so much an admirer of that ‘democracy’, that he would like to live there!
‘Mr Javid declared: “I am a proud, British-born Muslim, and I love my country more than any other place on earth. But, if for some reason, I had to leave, with my young family, and I was told that I must go and live in the Middle East, where would I decide to go?
“Would I choose Dubai, with its vibrant city life and soaring skyscrapers? No.
“Would I choose Saudi Arabia, a fabulously wealthy nation and the birthplace of the holy Prophet Mohammed? No.
“There is only one place I could possibly go: Israel, the only nation in the Middle East that shares the same democratic values as Britain.
“And the only nation in the Middle East where my family would feel the warm embrace of freedom and liberty”.’
https://www.thejc.com/what-mr-javid-said-to-conservative-friends-of-israel-guests-1.39532
Comments are closed on Craig’s previous article on Palestine.
With permission, I am quoting from Dr Khamis Elessi who is a doctor in Gaza at the Research & Evidence-Based Medicine Unit, Faculty of Medicine, Islamic University, Gaza City, Gaza Strip, Occupied Palestinian Territories.
He wrote to The Lancet on 27th April, 2018 about his experiences in treating his fellow Palestinians, dying and injured.
The Palestinian Day of Return: from a short day of commemoration to a long day of mourning
On Friday, March 30, 2018, marking the 42nd anniversary of Land Day—when Israeli forces killed six Palestinians during protests against land confiscation in 1976—Palestinians in the Gaza Strip marched to the eastern border with Israel beginning a six-week protest—what they termed the Great March of Return. It was the bloodiest day in Gaza since the 2014 Israel-Gaza conflict.
Thousands of Palestinian civilians including women and children participated in the protest, mostly staying 500–700 m from the perimeter fence between Israel and the Gaza Strip in five places—eastern Jabalia, eastern Gaza, eastern Bureij, eastern Khanyounis, and eastern Rafah.
The precise conduct of some participants in the march is disputed, but it is indisputable that the Israeli army responded with live ammunition from snipers, tank fire, plastic coated steel bullets, rubber bullets, and tear gas grenades launched from armoured military vehicles.
I have reviewed the latest official statistics and reports from the Ministry of Health in Gaza, official reports from the WHO office in Gaza, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR),6 and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)7 to collate this report on the number and type of injuries sustained by marchers. I have also followed up the patients who were admitted to hospitals by contacting hospital directors and the official spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health (MOH) and comparing the numbers with official reports released by the Palestinian Health Information center at the MOH Gaza office. During our follow-up, we checked on the numbers of those patients who subsequently died, were kept in hospital, or who were discharged after hospital treatment.
Fifteen deaths (aged between 19 and 42 years) and 1479 injuries were documented on March 30 through official admission reports or death certificates released by MOH. Of the 1479 injuries, 1074 cases were initially recorded as being admitted to hospitals. However, this list was later found to contain 39 duplicates, which was caused by patients being transferred between hospitals and being registered at both hospitals, making the exact number admitted during that day 1035 patients. Most deaths occurred at eastern Jabalia (five deaths, 296 injuries) followed by eastern Gaza (four deaths, 368 injuries), eastern Bureij (two deaths, 212 injuries), Khanyounis (three deaths, 357 injuries), and Rafah (one death, 246 injuries). Two men died subsequently in hospital. The table lists the fatalities including the location, type of weapon, and type of injury. At least one killed person was documented by many reporters and television stations to have been hit in the back of the head. Many protestors were hit in the chest, back, or leg and some injuries were captured live on camera as victims tried to escape the gunfire.
Table
Deaths based on data from the Gaza Ministry of Health official report and the Palestinian Center for Human Rights
/..
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(18)30940-1/fulltext?
In my opinion this was an opportunistic hatchet job, when Marc interrupted the meeting and noted the handover of the press release from the Telegraph journalist to Smeeth, her reaction was very defensive, like a child caught out doing wrong, Marc had moved on to note the lack of BAME in the audience, a few seconds later the guy in the pink tie, who was sitting next to Smeeth, started going on about Anti-Semitism, at which point Smeeth left the meeting, I think that Smeeth grabbed the AS idea and ran with it to cover her own duplicity. The NCC treated Marc appallingly and his case should be reviewed.
Man with pink tie who was sitting next to John Pienaar of the BBC and in the row behind Smeeth was Kevin Schofield (@PolhomeEditor)
https://twitter.com/polhomeeditor?lang=en
The latest Tweets from Kevin Schofield (@PolhomeEditor). Ex-Herald, Scotsman, Daily Record and Sun.
Now editor of https://t.co/DhU0dI4IDE – (PS don’t click on this link. It contains a Trojan)
Politics Home was owned by Lord Ashcroft. Now owned by Dod’s.
Dod’s Board http://www.dodsgroup.com/investor-centre/board-directors
Note Mark Smith, latterly chairman of Bell Pottinger and before that COO of Chime Communications – which has a connection to Lord Coe!
Lord Bell infamous for his work at Saatchi & Saatchi as the éminence grise behind the rise of Thatcher.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Bell,_Baron_Bell
The whole is a Tory nest.
Schofield was political editor of the Sun! for five years before he went to Politics Home. Enough said.
I’m disappointed to read Craig being so judgmental about Wadsworth, Livingstone and Walker. Not one of them is remotely anti-Semitic and they have all been victims of an appalling witch hunt. The anti-Semitism cry about Wadsworth – apparently initiated by the journalist sitting next to Smeeth – was a ridiculous attempt to suggest Wadsworth was deploying an anti-Semitic trope about Jews being in control of the media. What he was doing was reporting what he had just witnessed – collusion between Smeeth and the right wing press – which is what is bringing the Labour Party into disrepute. He was objecting to the hounding of the leadership by the press, which is what the question and answer session had become, since the journos didn’t want to know about Chakrabarti. Moreover, Labour’s Compliance Unit (ugh) never implemented the report and indeed several times leaked their findings to that same rightwing and pro-Israeli press before informing the accused. These practices show that not only was Marc absolutely right, but the rot went further than he stated at the time. Ruth Smeeth is a former BICOM employee who has been elevated to the position of chief cry-bully of the false antisemitism campaign and yet she has been allowed to drive black grassroots activists out of the party. This is a scandal that must be resisted vigorously! Please think again.